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KEREN DETTON

Keren Detton is curator and director of Le Quartier, contemporary art centre in Quimper (Brittany, France) since 2009. She works with artists from different generations and develops exhibition projects and publications on a national and international scale. Her programme includes monographic exhibitions (Guy de Cointet, Ann Veronica Janssens, Claude Closky, Carey Young, Adva Zakai, Fayçal Baghriche…) and collective exhibitions, which focus on forms and languages, perception of images and the construction of identities. From 2004 to 2009, she worked in Air de Paris gallery and conducted a prospective programme titled La Planck. She held the position of president of the association C-E-A (French association of curators) from 2007 to 2009, and is still involved as a board member.

Vincent Honoré When was Le Quartier Contemporary Art Center created, and what were the factors that brought it into being?Keren Detton Le Quartier was founded in 1990 on the initiative of the former director of the Quimper art school, Michel Pagnoux. Its underpinnings were the intense competition in art, literature and film in Quimper and the implementation of the decentralisation policies initiated by Jack Lange in the mid-1980s. A series of preview exhibitions with international artists convinced municipal decision-makers to support the creation of a centre d’art. Le Quartier was set up in the same building as the art school but operated autonomously, enabling it to be part of a professional network to which students had special access. Subsequently, the implementation of a contract with the state, region and department guaranteed that it would be possible to work with the public in a sustained way, particularly through the assistance they provided for the production of works and for mediation activities.

2. Project room, Le Quartier CAC

V.H. Charles Esche described his ideal museum as fundamentally uncertain: simultaneously and fully a community centre, laboratory, institute and gallery. A place where production is not necessarily “productive”, a place that is always being reconfigured, an open form with an incomplete architecture. How did you structure the centre’s curatorial approach when you took up the director’s post?K.D. A centre d’art is by definition a place of reconfigurations and reconsiderations. In 2010, I suggested reviewing the allocation of the spaces in Le Quartier so that we could create a Project Room, an artistic experimentation zone serving as a counterpoint to the exhibitions, reactive to artists’ ideas and able to accommodate works in progress or works stemming from collective creative processes. The idea was to shake up the annual programme, introduce different rhythms, play on synchronic or diachronic effects, while preserving an artistic research space over the long term and continuing to do creative work with publications (catalogues, anthologies of texts, artist books). I also wanted to work on the porosity between the inside and outside in order to shatter the military aspect of this former barracks and highlight the seeing conditions. The fact of opening the exhibition rooms to the light of day had an effect on the centre d’art’s regulars. It was as if visitors were both surprised and relieved to see the works integrated into their day-to-day life. This pleased me, because I think a centre d’art should be able to bring itself into play just as much as it presents things, favouring encounters and questioning disparities. Recently, artist and architect Catherine Rannou offered a visit to the worksite of an exhibition setup tackling architecture through language and imagination, radically transforming the institution. I find it very stimulating when works speak to visitors on the level of their relationship to the body and to language.

3. Pierre Labat, Mr. Anderson, 2012

V.H. What is the role of the director of a contemporary centre d’art in 2015 ?K.D. Le Quartier will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in a shaken political, economic and media context. The state is withdrawing, the map of regions is changing and the status of centres d’art is very weakened. As we speak, Le Quartier is being threatened by drastic budget cuts, and yet its balance sheet has been unanimously praised by all of its public partners. It runs an untimely programme alongside artists, investigates our visual cultures through images and language, and merrily crosses the boundaries between disciplines. Yet it is being told to justify its legitimacy. If mobility is greater today, what can a centre d’art offer in the provinces? Le Quartier is in a prime position between the art school, to which it offers genuine professional springboards, and the fine art museum, with which it collaborates regularly. But above all it is a place of emerging forms and ideas, passions and questions. It is rooted in its territory and resonates with places elsewhere, and keeps up a dialogue with artists and visitors. The director’s role is to keep this relationship with art and artists alive.

4. Ante Timmermans, Der Souffleur des ICHTS, 2014-2015

V.H. PIANO wants to create a forum for exchange and dialogue between Italian and French art centres. Why did you wish to participate and what programme are you proposing?K.D. It’s a chance, through an association like d.c.a, to be able to connect with an art scene in another country, develop a better knowledge of its network of institutions and independents, exchange ideas and build things in with several others. It’s even essential, because a centre d’art feeds on alterity. Alfred Jarry Archipelago was born of the desire to understand artistic creation today through Alfred Jarry, the father of pataphysics. The project has turned into an open curatorial platform, which apprehends the legacy of the author of Ubu Roi not historically but speculatively. Since he was a well-informed observer of the artists of his time, we decided to make way for Alfred Jarry the curator! With Julie Pellegrin, director of the centre d’art La Ferme du Buisson in Noisiel, we are presenting a two-part exhibition, La valse des pantins – Act I and II. Leonardo Bigazzi, curator at the Museo Marino Marini in Florence, is presenting a programme of performances. Eva Wittocx, curator at M – Museum and for the Playground Festival in Leuven (Belgium) is joining us by linking monographic exhibitions and performances. The project framework is open enough to incorporate different points of view on this subversive figure full of contrasts, and to more closely examine his relationship to theatre, his projection of bodies and desire, his use of codes and absurdity, and the mixing of genres and identities. A publication in the form of an almanac will be the receptacle of this multiplicity of perspectives, with supplements provided by new contributors, authors and artists.